WASHINGTON – Former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani drew a swift and angry reaction Wednesday from his prospective Democratic rivals for president for asserting that the election of a Democrat in 2008 would put the country back “on defense” against terrorism, prolonging the global conflict with violent extremists and costing the nation additional lives.

The leading Democratic presidential candidates challenged Giuliani’s claim that their party cannot keep the country safe and accused him of attempting to divide the country over what many consider the paramount issue of the coming campaign.

Giuliani’s comments at a county Republican dinner in New Hampshire on Tuesday night reignited a political argument that was at the center of the presidential campaign four years ago, and that echoes now in the debate between President Bush and congressional Democrats over the administration’s Iraq policy.

The former mayor told his GOP audience that America ultimately will win the campaign against global terrorism, regardless of whether there are Democratic or Republican presidents. But he warned that the election of a Democrat could be costly in terms of lives.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., accused Giuliani of taking “the politics of fear to a new low” and predicted that Americans will reject such rhetoric.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., argued that the record of the Bush administration proved “that political rhetoric won’t do anything to quell those threats.”

Otto Warmbier was arrested in January 2016 at the end of a brief tourist visit to North Korea. He had been medically evacuated and was being treated at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center when he died at age 22.